The subject matter herein relates generally to an electrical component having a substrate with an array of electrical contacts along a surface of the substrate.
Various packages or devices exist within the computer industry that require interconnection to a printed circuit board. The devices may be profiled with arrays of 50 by 50 contacts or even greater. Given the plurality of lands, the centerline spacing, and given the force applied to the packages when mounting to the circuit board, accommodating the packages can lead to a variety of problems in practice.
Sockets exist within the market for the interconnection of such devices, where the sockets include a substrate having contacts terminated to one side of the substrate for connection to the package or device, and contacts or balls terminated to the other side of the substrate for connection to the printed circuit board. The contacts have centerline spacings that correspond with the spacing of lands or balls on the device. Some known sockets, such as the contact grid array system described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,371,073 to Williams, use a contact array that is bonded to a dielectric substrate, which is then bonded to an interposer substrate. The contacts are then plated to create a conductive path from the contacts to a conductive layer on the interposer substrate. A 3D photoresist process is used to plate the contact array and the substrate. The 3D photoresist process has a high cost and low yield associated therewith. Additionally, attachment of the substrate to the interposer substrate is time consuming. For example, the contact array and substrate are laminated to the interposer substrate, requiring a 1-2 hour cure time.
It may also be desirable to directly mount packages to a circuit board without the above-described sockets. For example, a contact array may be coupled to a surface of a circuit board (e.g., motherboard) and the packages may be directly mounted to the contact array on the circuit board. However, the manufacture of such contact arrays may experience the same time and cost problems noted above.
A need remains for an electrical component having an array of electrical contacts that can be manufactured in a cost effective and reliable manner.